QOTD: Peter Singer's Song of Death

From the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Peter Singer aknowledges that once we can abandon “those doctrines about the sanctity of human life,” abortion, on the moral ground of utility, makes killing other humans not only viable but humane.

I do not deny that if one accepts abortion on the grounds provided in Chapter 6, the case for killing other human beings, in certain circumstances, is strong. As I shall try to show in this chapter, however, this is not something to be regarded with horror, and the use of the Nazi analogy is utterly misleading. On the contrary, once we abandon those doctrines about the sanctity of human life that—as we saw in Chapter 4 —collapse as soon as they are questioned, it is the refusal to accept killing that, in some cases, is horrific.